According to Barry Diller, John Travolta backed out of starring in American Gigolo because of the film’s “somewhat gay subtext.”
In his tell-all memoir, Who Knew, the power player recalls a time when the Grease star was attached to star in the Paul Schrader written- and directed-movie before he had to step away. In his book, Diller writes that Travolta told then-Paramount Pictures president Michael Eisner he couldn’t lead the project because he was grieving the death of his mother and then-girlfriend Diana Hyland.
“He slumped down in a chair in Michael’s office, started to cry and said, ‘I can’t do American Gigolo. I’m too sad. I’m still in mourning. It’s the wrong thing for me to do. You have to let me out of it,’” Diller, who was the CEO of Paramount at the time, writes. “Michael came down to my office and said, ‘John’s just left, and we have to let him out of the movie because he just can’t do it.’ I said, ‘He’s faking it and using you. It’s too late to recast and he’s perfect for it.’”
Diller adds that he “was certain [Travolta] had acted his way through his meeting with Michael” and “no longer wanted to do Gigolo. He was afraid of playing that character because of its somewhat gay subtext. For days, I said, ‘I’m not even going to hear of letting him out of the movie, full stop, period.’”
Despite Travolta’s hesitation about continuing on with American Gigolo, Diller sat the actor down and tried to convince him to disregard his “twerpy, inexperienced manager.”
“John came to my house one afternoon. I began by saying, ‘Right now, you are the biggest star in the world, and you worry you’re going to screw it up. You’re listening to this twerpy, inexperienced manager of yours, and it’s leading you to the wrong decisions,” he writes. “This is a critical time for you, and when you’ve got a great script and a great part, you don’t let anything put you off it.’ I went on with various examples of how his management had been mishandling things since his spurt to superstardom.”
Ultimately, Diller’s conversation with Travolta — and his comments about his manager — backfired.
“He left with a pained and hurt look. A day or two later it became clear that he was not going to show up for the first day of shooting and would take whatever consequences ensued,” Diller writes. “I had made the situation worse because he’d told his manager about my criticism of him, so they both hated me.”
Richard Gere ended up nabbing the lead role of Julian Kay right as he was “coming off his breakout debut in our film Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” Diller writes. The mogul closes the section off by noting that “Gigolo made [Gere] a star, and for extra good measure he would go on to break up my relationship with Diane,” in reference to the affair his longtime love, Diane von Furstenberg, had with Gere in the early ’80s.
Schrader previously told The Hollywood Reporter that “three things” led Travolta to sign off of American Gigolo: the passing of his mother, “his first mega-flop, a film called Moment to Moment” and “he had growing anxiety about the gay subtext [of the film].”
A rep for Travolta has not yet responded to THR‘s request for comment.
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